a bower about a dozen yards off

Wondering if this dependable house phenomenon in British literature, after thriving quietly for many years in the service of other things, was seized, expanded, and decorated by Dickens, for Mr Wemmick in particular, but for others as well, e.g., Marley becoming a doorknob, Krook characterising the front of his shop with bottles, Dick Swiveller referring to "his single chamber" in the plural "as his rooms, his lodgings, or his chambers, conveying to his hearers a notion of indefinite space, and leaving their imaginations to wander through long suites of lofty halls, at pleasure."

Jaggers is so secure in his personal cunning and viability that he never locks his house; he never needs to, for no one will rob him. “You know where I live; now, no bolt is ever drawn there; why don’t you do a stroke of business with me? Come; can’t I tempt you?” he says to the best burglars, according to Mr Wemmick. Wemmick, meanwhile, has his moat, his drawbridge, his happy pantomime of security and wealth. Jaggers, as mentioned, is his own security. His protection does not need a look. They both derive pleasure from their different securities. Each one is integral to the state of his own house. The house is about well-being. Wemmick talks about himself being fantastically "besieged" in the future and holding out with his cucumber frame.

Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long time to get at.

The device of the secure house might lead (if you could trace it) to the hidden house, Badger's den in Willows, 1908 - this personal ownership of the mysterious grotto, hideaway, or prison cell, of a Gothic novel, the ruins of a Roman settlement holding up his ceilings, too, ruins domesticated – and it also might lead to the sight of the Twins on their tree, spotted but invulnerable in Titus Groan, 1946. And did the commercial wealth of the Victorians contribute to it; the Great House, the Secret Garden?

(Is the dependable fictional house more particular to this nationality than to others? I am not going to hazard a guess, though now there's Beowulf, their ancient chronicle, the story of a double home invasion, or one home invasion answered with another – the action taking place in Denmark, although the manuscript we have was made elsewhere, English, indoors; and Beowulf himself was no doubt a direct inspiration for Aunty Jack centuries later threatening to Come Round To Your House And Rip Your Bloody Arms Off if you didn't tune in to the show again next week. Observe, if you will, this merging of the hero Beowulf and the villain, Grendel's Mother, standing, in the persona of Aunty Jack, upon a rock, her hand in a boxing glove, grunting at you; how well you can imagine her seizing a foe and wrestling in the dark hall of Hrothgar, or living in a swamp, being of massive nature as she evidently is. That old hall, maybe, developing, coming within the reach of more people, not strictly kings and thanes; Wemmick inhabiting his Heorot.)